by C. M. Carney
“Sorry,” Gryph said, lowering his head in a small bow. “What are my options?”
A grumble of discontent, or perhaps gastrointestinal distress, moved through Syndravion as he gazed from one codex to the next. “Well, there are five paths; The Pattern of Might, The Pattern of Magic, The Pattern of Guile, The Pattern of Enlightenment and The Pattern of Advancement. All have value but some are more valuable than others.”
Gryph was about to ask what the differences were when a prompt filled this vision.
The Five Patterns.
The Pattern of Might:
Teaches a rune-form that will increase the Martial Skills of those who walk the pattern.
The Pattern of Magic:
Teaches a rune-form that will increase the Magical Skills of those who walk the pattern.
The Pattern of Guile:
Teaches a rune-form that will increase the Stealth Skills of those who walk the pattern.
The Pattern of Enlightenment:
Teaches a rune-form that will expand the Understanding of those who walk the pattern.
The Pattern of Advancement:
Teaches a rune-form that will expand the Learning of those who walk the pattern.
“What does walk the pattern mean?” Gryph asked bewildered. The few rune-forms he’d encountered did not have paths. They were complex drawings that empowered a particular spell effect. He’d thought of them as magical computer programs. They just were, there was no walking.
“What do you mean what do you mean?” Syndravion asked head cocked sideways at Gryph like he was an idiot. “You walk.” The robed man started shuffling around in circles. “Walk. Like this. You’ve never walked before?”
Gryph stared.
“You always were a dolt Exuum. First, you draw the rune-form.” Syndravion mocked drawing an elaborate rune-form, his tongue sticking out in concentration. “Then you power it up.” He cast his arms above his head, made a variety of power surging noises and vague explosion sounds. “Then you walk the pattern.” He shambled around in an intricate circular pathway only he could see. “And then you gain the powers.” He spasmed like a man being electrocuted.
“Okay then,” Gryph said and looked at each book. The first three patterns seemed self-explanatory, but the vague description of the last two piqued his interest. “And the difference between understanding and learning?”
“Simple. Understanding allows you to use what you already know better, while Learning enables you to learn more when you learn." The old man’s eyes turned to slits with suspicion. “I told you all this before. Why are you asking again?”
"Just being thorough,” Gryph said, his voice a bit higher pitched than normal. While he did not find the explanation simple, he feared any further questions would arouse suspicions in the unstable Grandmaster. So, gain more from what I learn or know more from what I gain?
The first three patterns all held significant promise, especially if they could power up the army he was building, but he found his eyes drawn to the last two, the Pattern of Enlightenment and the Pattern of Advancement. Gryph imagined both concepts working hand in hand with his Lore skill.
The agony of choice made his head hurt, but he was only one level away from reaching the next tier in Ritual Magic. When he did, perhaps he'd be able to return to this strange realm, and if he survived Syndravion’s insanity, learn the second rune-form. That’s a big if. Gryph thought.
“Hurry young’un, I don’t have all day,” Syndravion said and then a thoughtful look crossed his face. “Actually, I do, but I’m sick of looking at you. You’re far too pretty with those soulful gray eyes, your flowing silver locks and them high cheekbones. Bound to make me feel bad about myself or get me all riled up.” The old man leered at Gryph for a moment. “Perhaps a bit of both.”
Gryph backed away a pace, putting space between himself and the ancient Grandmaster. After a moment the mage backed off and waved towards the lecterns. “Hop to it, laddie. That dragon won’t kill itself.”
Gryph stepped forward and then remembered the final note in the Occulorum’s description. "Wait, I need the word of power to unlock the Occulorum."
“Oh, right,” Syndravion said, smacking his stump against his forehead in a duh’ motion. “The word of power is…” He stared at Gryph, perhaps hoping he would make a guess.
Gryph waited for several moments as the tension built. “Yes?”
“You’re not going to guess?”
“No,” Gryph said, his tone descending towards hostility.
“Oh. You’re no damn fun. The Word of Power is … sausages.”
“What?” Gryph said, both bewildered and irritated.
“Sausages, sausages. Ya know meat and spices stuffed into an intestinal lining. Yummy goodness. Don’t you have them where you’re from? Damn shame if you don’t. Tell ya what, next time you’re here, if I’m in a good mood and don’t kill you, we’ll roast some over a nice fire. Whatcha say to that?”
“Okay then,” Gryph said and without another word or look walked to the Pattern of Enlightenment codex. His fingers grazed the cover, and it heaved open. More swirling lines and snaking runes spun towards him and a flash blinded him. A prompt filled his vision.
You have learned the rune-form Path of Enlightenment
Tier: Journeyman. - Activation Requirement: 30,000 mana. - Power Requirement: 1,000 mana (per walk).
Those who walk the pattern of this rune-form will gain greater enlightenment of the world around them. Walkers will gain a bonus to their Wisdom. Their minds will be clearer and make connections between disparate things. Walkers may discover that they are more intuitive and have greater control over their emotions, memories and will even understand their dreams to a greater degree.
In practice this enlightenment boosts the effectiveness of all skills, perks, spells and other abilities that they already possess, increasing the effectiveness of those abilities by 10%.
EXP: A spell that does Life damage will now do 10% more damage.
This effect is permanent. Benefits of walking the pattern are awarded once. Further walks do not add further bonuses unless the rune-form is upgraded to a higher tier, at which point the individual may walk the pattern again to receive the bonus.
By the time his eyes cleared he was back in the tomb, leaning against the chest. Lex stared down on him, speaking loud and slow through cupped hands.
“Can … you … hear … me?”
“Yeah man, get out of my face,” Gryph said, swatting the NPC’s hands away. Ovrym helped him to his feet and the others all waited for him to speak. All except Lex.
“So, we in business?” the eager NPC asked.
Gryph looked up from the book, his face splitting into a wide grin. “Oh yeah, we’re in business.”
5
The sudden gust of cool mountain air pushed Eris’ hair into a chaotic, jet black halo, nearly breaking her meditative state. She called on the training she’d received these last few weeks and her mind found focus. As if responding to her control, the wind eased and her hair settled once more, cascading to the middle of her back.
She kept her eyes closed as she reached outwards with her other senses. The sun warmed her cheeks, the burbling of a nearby mountain stream calmed her spirit and the scent of wildflowers brought a smile to her face. Even the air tasted pure. It was as if she’d found Nirvana.
Though she’d been a guest of the Foundation for the better part of a month, she was still no closer to completing her mission. Perhaps the Seekers are a myth, she thought, but pushed the defeatist thoughts down. The boss was rarely wrong, and she had no reason to believe he was now. Plus, a girl could do worse than spend a few weeks relaxing here.
She eased her eyes open and a world awash in multihued greens, blues and whites greeted her. She sat a third of the way up a tall mountain peak. Emerald green grass flowed down the mountainside where it met the sapphire blue of a crisp mountain lake. Above and around her, fields of glistening snow sparkled with the s
himmer of stars.
Eris almost let herself believe she was on Earth, relaxing in the Swiss Alps, but this was the Realms, a place where beauty, often as not hid danger. On instinct she reached her right hand out, caressing the smooth ebonwood of her carbine’s forestock.
The weapon, a three-foot rifle likely unique on Korynn, would have been familiar to any gun enthusiast of Earth. She’d inherited it upon the previous owner’s death. Each time she touched it memories of the man who’d been both friend and teacher surged inside her, drawing forth smiles of joy and pangs of loss.
Eris breathed deep, summoning a russet glow of mana to her fingertips. She eased the magical energy into the dull amber colored metal of the gun’s receiver. The mana twined around the simple mechanisms of the deadly weapon. Her perception pushed through the receiver, down the rifled barrel and out the muzzle.
The 12-shot magazine held 12 iron rounds. Unlike the firearms of Earth, they contained no gunpowder. The power of the weapon came from Eris’ Earth Magic skill, specifically her ability to manipulate magnetic fields. To put it simply, the rifle was a low powered, hand held rail gun.
The iron rounds were not the only projectiles at her disposal. A half dozen clips stored in the twin bandoliers crisscrossing her chest held other rounds, primed to receive a wide variety of spells and effects. Her offensive output was only limited by the number of rounds she could carry and her supply of mana.
It had bred a certain cockiness in the woman once known as Mo.
To her left a trail, well worn by endless generations of goats and Loremasters, led up the mountain. The trail culminated in a fortress carved into the steep cliff face. For millennia the Foundation, one of the three established Loremaster schools on Korynn, had called this edifice home. Behind the nearly impenetrable walls, the Wise Masters of the Foundation had preserved knowledge from around the Realms.
More like hoarded it, Eris thought. She was no stranger to the power of secret information. Back on Earth her status as an FBI agent provided perfect cover for her true calling as an asset of the secretive intelligence agency known as the Aegis. That calling had set her life on an irrevocable path to this very moment. At least it’s a peaceful moment.
Eris rotated her shoulders and closed her eyes, easing back into her meditation. Her lids had barely closed when the boom of an explosion echoed through the valley. Her eyes snapped open to see a ragged hole torn through the wall of the fortress. Rock and mortar avalanched down the cliff face and several figures floated through the smoking hole in the wall.
Eris jumped to her feet, grabbed her rifle and sprinted towards the Foundation. With practiced ease, she pulled the pair of goggles that forever adorned her forehead down over her eyes and activated the drone she’d left in the fortress. The small device bore the eye and feathers of a shadow hawk, a deadly, and stealthy nighttime predator with unparalleled Perception. It could lurk unseen in any shadow and allowed her to see and hear things over vast distances.
The drone’s telemetry filled part of her vision, but revealed nothing but black, like someone had pulled a shroud over the drone’s eye. “Shit,” Eris exclaimed. Something was blocking her feed. She breathed, applying the meditative techniques she’d learned over the last several weeks and increased her speed.
Three minutes later she arrived and ducked behind the remnants of a crumbling tower that had once guarded the edge of the Foundation’s compound. She rested her rifle into a crook between two moss covered bricks and peered through the magical scope atop her rifle. The sight told her she was 1,323 feet from the front gate of the complex, well within her kill shot range.
She calmed her breath and scanned the area. At first she saw nothing, but then a pair of odd shadows piqued her interest and she adjusted the scope to ultraviolet. Purple energetic light exploded into her vision bringing a pair of tall, thin humanoid figures into focus.
She activated Analyze.
SHADOW THRALL (Construct)–Level: 32
Health
Stamina
Mana
Spirit
856
1,265
654
0
Shadow Thralls are enslaved beings created by infecting a sentient humanoid with shadow energy drawn from a layer of primal shadow within the Realm of Death. Newly made Shadow Thralls seek to imprint on a master, normally the fell sorcerer who poisoned them with shadow. From that moment forward they will obey commands and will sacrifice their half-lives to protect the Master.
They are stealthy creatures able to move instantly between shadows in a manner that seems like teleportation to the outside observer. Their main attack is made with their claws, which can phase through most armor to inflict necrotic (Death) damage. They also possess an ability called Occlude which enables them to use shadows to blind both natural and magical sight.
Rumors of a cure lost to the mists of time persist.
Strengths
Immunities
Weaknesses
Stealth, shadow shift.
Death, Acid, Cold, Slashing, Piercing, Electricity, Blunt, Fire.
Light, Empyrean, Life.
Poor bastards, Eris thought, refusing to let her sympathy for the fell creatures give her pause. Their Occlude ability explained why the Hawkeye Drone wasn’t transmitting. Guess I’ll have to do this the old-fashioned way.
She reached up with her left hand and released the magazine from her rifle. Without taking her eye from the sight she pulled another clip from her bandolier. With a practiced motion she removed the clip and thumbed out the first two rounds and replaced them with a pair of special rounds and returned the magazine to its housing with a dull click. Unlike the solid lead rounds, the new projectiles were hollow and filled with the sap of a flower known as the moon lotus. The viscous liquid was pure Life Magic, anathema to death creatures. The rounds were expensive, but they had recouped their cost many times over in battle.
Eris chambered a new round and took aim on the first thrall and made small adjustments based on the sight’s measurement of the wind speed and direction. The pressure of her focused mana built inside her, like the dull pain of an impending headache. She pushed the discomfort aside and channeled two streams of mana into the rifle. The first was the brown of earth and the second was the bright green of life. She took a deep breath and cast Purify, adding a further boost of Life Magic. Eris was only level 13 in the skill but hoped the extra oomph would allow her to take out both thralls swiftly.
She eased her finger onto the trigger and emptied her lungs extending the normal pause between breaths to a full ten seconds, ensuring no motion of her diaphragm would send the shot off target. As it always did, her perception of time slowed.
She pulled the trigger with a smooth, confident motion and the pent-up magnetic energy in the weapon surged into the round accelerating it out at over 5,000 feet per second. Even lacking the cacophonous force of gunpowder, the shot would have thundered from her gun had she not activated the sound dampening properties of her Arcane Gunslinger perk Muffle.
The instant the first shot left the weapon she adjusted her aim to the other thrall, activated a second perk called Quick Target and fired. Only then did she allow herself to breathe again. The shots found their marks, and both thralls shifted and spasmed as the life energy surged through them like lightning through a dark storm cloud.
The attack caught the thralls by surprise, and both suffered from a Critical Hit and a 20 second Stun debuff. All told, the attacks had delivered nearly 400 points of silent damage to the shadowy abominations. Eris took aim again, but before she could fire a sharp gust of wind tore down the face of the mountain pushing her aim off target.
She cursed and leapt to her feet, activating Swift as the Wind as she ran. The Air Magic tier ability increased her already impressive decathlon sprinter speed by 200%. She ran full out for 15 seconds, closing to within 300 feet of the gate, before stopping and taking aim again.
She poured more mana into her rifle and fired
three quick shots at the first thrall before switching targets and firing another three into the second. The silent shots tore into their shadowy bodies and for the briefest moment nothing happened. Then golden fissures began to spread across the deep black darkness, and they exploded with a flash of green light.
Eris ran. As she reached the gate, the Hawkeye Drone came back online. It was where she’d left it looking down on the central chamber of the Foundation. What Eris saw made her stomach churn.
Strewn across the stone floor were more than a dozen bodies clad in the simple gray robes of the Loremasters. A few bore char marks indicating they’d died from the explosion that had torn the wall open. They’d been the lucky ones, for the other corpses showed signs of having been twisted and bent, arms, legs and even necks wrenched into unnatural positions. Whoever had managed that feat had to have some serious strength.
An elderly man, his clothing marred by dirt, crawled backwards like an injured crab. His eyes were wide with fear and he grunted in pain with each push. His left ankle hung at an odd angle, broken and useless. He came to a jarring stop when his shoulder smacked into the back wall of the chamber.
He was the gardener and Eris cursed her stupidity. Stupid girl. He was hiding right in front of you all these weeks.
“Where is he?” asked a voice that sent a chill down Eris’ back.
No, no, no, anyone but him. Panic threatened to overwhelm Eris, but she focused every ounce of will into resisting the fear. A moment later she calmed.
“Please, I already told you. I do not know any Seeker.”